PART ONE (This part of the paper appeared in Direction: A Journal on
the Alexander Technique, 2002, Vol. 2, No. 10. pp. 20-23)

INTRODUCTION
What will the future demand of Alexander Technique teaching as a profession?
Indeed, by what right do we even call our work a profession, when in
many locations our academic qualifications are not recognised alongside
those of school teachers or even chiropractors and acupuncturists? But
if we seek such recognition, what might we have to surrender, and would
it be worth the effort? This paper attempts to review a number of these
issues, particularly in relation to the relevance and applicability
of competency-based training (CBT) to Alexander Technique (AT) teacher
education. Although the development of standards of professional competency
and assessment is examined in the light of current Australian government
procedures for recognising training courses operating within its vocational
education and training (VET) sector, these issues are relevant to AT
teachers and societies throughout the world. Recommendations are made
for continuing discussion, reflection and research.

COMPETENCY-BASED TRAINING
May I begin by asking those of you who are certified AT Teachers to
take some time to reflect on the following questions? What criteria
were used in assessing your competence to teach the Technique? Who formulated
those criteria? Did you ever see them in written form? Who assessed
you as competent? What were the qualifications and experience of your
assessor(s)? Was any account taken of your experience of the Technique
prior to training, for example, the number of lessons or workshops you’d
attended? Were any other prior skills or accomplishments taken into
account, for example as a school teacher, a nurse, a parent, a business
person?

As an AT teacher educator, my interest in this subject stems from speculating
on the possibility of accreditation of AT teacher training courses under
the Australian government’s National Training Framework (NTF).[1]
Underpinned by a competency-based approach, the intention of this framework
is to simplify the way training is regulated, define who is responsible
for it and describe how high standards of quality can be guaranteed.
It also allows for private providers such as AT training courses to
request through regional authorities that their courses and qualifications
be nationally recognised. This, in turn, would allow their students
access to student visas and study grants, as well as pathways to higher
qualifications and degrees.

Of course, it’s possible that AUSTAT and the wider profession
could decide that any benefits derived from adoption of the framework
would be outweighed by the financial, administrative and political costs
of dismantling and redesigning the familiar teacher training structures.
As well, the rules that govern AUSTAT’s rights to membership of
the international group of Affiliated Societies (AS) would need to be
taken into account. Deviation from these rules—for example, changing
from a time-based structure to CBT—could jeopardise its AS affiliation.
There might also be political costs associated with restrictions on
the independence and creativity of individual teacher educators.

COMPETENCY STANDARDS
The educational paradigm of CBT and assessment is outcomes based. In
other words, when learners have demonstrated competence in each of the
industry-identified modules of their work, craft or profession they
may be credentialled accordingly. Regardless of the time spent in training,
the certified accumulation of an appropriate number of these credentials
through recognition of prior learning or current training may lead to
a qualification.

Whether or not AT teacher educators agree with the premises underpinning
CBT, the concept of competency is not so strange. At some point all
certifed AT teachers were deemed “competent” by a training
course director whose criteria were probably aligned with the STAT list
of five beginning teacher competencies:

an understanding of Alexander’s [terminology]
an ability to convey this understanding to the pupil, both manually
and verbally
some knowledge of F.M. Alexander’s life and the history of the
Technique
an ability to effect a change in the “use” of a pupil
an ongoing expectation of change in [her/his] own “use”[2]
As far as I can tell, however, most AT teacher educators aim to develop
these competencies by relying on their own experience and continuity
of process over time to effect trainee competence rather than any systematic
adherence to a curriculum. It would indeed require a paradigm shift
for many of these educators to design their curricula using CBT terms.

The AS agreement, moreover, endorses a program formularised by STAT
that includes a minimum attendance time before qualification of 1600
hours spread evenly over three years. This time-based rule on teacher
training is quite prescriptive, allowing very little room for such things
as natural ability, prior learning, experience or accelerated skill
acquisition. Many AT teachers are still quite attached to this model,
even though I understand it was instigated to satisfy British Home Office
visa rules so that overseas students could train in London with one
of Alexander’s successors.

I remember my astonishment at being told this by a well-known teacher
educator at an unofficial STAT meeting in London in 1994—that
a bureaucratic edict, not necessarily a requirement of Alexander himself,
had begun a pedagogic principle most of our profession has been subscribing
to for at least forty years. I can only wonder how many other of our
ideological certainties, which would also have been simply the preferences
of the dominant stakeholders of the time, have been uncritically accepted
in our work over the years and since become habits. And yet while some
present day policy makers have begun questioning the residency rule
and suggesting alternative ideas, it does seem strange to hear of proposals
for part-time courses that insist on the same number of hours being
spread over more than three years, as though the figure 1600 had some
particular educational significance.

AT teacher educators keen on the persistence of a three year program
may be able to make a convincing case for it based on the importance
of group interaction and the personal development that it allows. As
well, given that most training courses operate on the basis that senior
students practise their teaching skills by working with the juniors,
who in turn use the opportunity to reflect on the process, other evidence
could be gathered to support the value of time-based programs for skill
formation. Supporters of fixed term programs might also argue that some
sorts of prior learning and pre-existing formal qualifications may even
hinder a trainee’s progress if these things have led to fixity
of thinking, reduced bodily freedom or the need to spend extra time
unlearning them.

These claims may be true, but apart from Alexander’s brother,
A.R. Alexander,[3] and perhaps a small group
of his contemporaries, very few students have had the experience of
beginning a training course wondering if they might be competent enough
to be certified in fewer than three years. Such a possibility would
significantly colour a trainee’s attitude to learning.

In May 1998 STATNews supplied a supplementary “Operational Review”,
prepared by consultant Alex Scott,[4] which
summarises the responses to a recent questionnaire it sent to STAT teacher
members asking for their opinions on various matters, ranging from administration
and advertising to ethics and professional standards. In the matter
of training and accreditation Scott recommends that proper academic
standards be applied, and links forged with a university or “training
validator” to produce a recognised qualification.[5]
Reflecting the growing awareness by rank-and-file STAT members of the
lack of consistent competency standards for the AT profession, particularly
at beginning teacher level, Scott also states:

There appears to be a reluctance to countenance change and considerable
unhappiness amongst [trainees] as to the overall efficacy of their training
courses in terms of equipping them to be teachers… Although the
Technique is an art, a craft that is difficult to assess other than
by a period of continuous assessment by an experienced teacher, some
greater degree of conformity between courses is clearly essential…
Dialogue with universities, both with regard to academic courses and
proper scientific research, should be strongly encouraged.[6]

DEVELOPMENT OF STANDARDS
Chappell and Melville[7] draw on research techniques
for tapping into the collective experience of professional practitioners
that are explicated by Gonczi, Hager and Oliver in their book Establishing
Competency-Based Standards in the Professions.[8]
Foremost in this description is what Gonczi et al call the “integrated
approach” to conceptualising professional competency, as represented
by their definition of a competent professional as someone who has the
attributes necessary for job performance to the appropriate standards.
The emphasis is on three key elements—attributes (such as knowledge,
abilities, skills and attitudes), performance (of roles or tasks) and
standards (of performance and for assessment purposes). Embedded in
this definition is the clear distinction between performance, which
is directly observable, and competence, which is not directly observable
but can be inferred from performance in combination with evidence of
possession of other attributes such as specialised knowledge and skills.

Just how many stakeholders in AT teacher education will support the
philosophical underpinnings of CBT may depend on how they conceptualise
it from within their own local political and cultural education systems.
In some countries, where CBT may still emphasise precise, atomistic
descriptions of “outcomes” and assessment criteria, AT practitioners
would probably, and rightly, think of it as contrary to the principles
of the AT itself. However, I would say the integrated or “broader”
view of competency-based learning is consistent with the AT in that
they both belong to the humanistic, interpretive educational paradigm.
As Chappell, Gonczi and Hager say, this view of CBT:

[D]oes not confuse performance with competence, and argues that a large
variety of attributes which underpins performance must be addressed
in any competency analysis… It emphasises human agency and social
interrelations in competency descriptions. It regards competence as
developmental and elaborative rather than static and minimalist. It
places great importance on groups of practitioners coming together and
through a process of debate and dialogue, developing competency descriptions
of practice… It views descriptions of competence as being open
to renegotiation and change…[9]
Preston and Walker call this broader view of professional competency
“holistic”,[10] in the tradition
of John Dewey whose influence on this discourse can be glimpsed in the
following paraphrasing of Dewey: In order to perform adequately in the
phases of thinking, one needs a number of qualities, abilities and attitudes.
They will be classified under those headings, although it will be impossible
to give them full meaning in isolation. Their meanings are essentially
to be sought in the interrelationships existing among them.[11]

Notwithstanding that Alexander and Dewey were friends for 36 years,
and that Alexander’s influence on Dewey is increasingly acknowledged,[12]
I suggest that a holistic perspective that includes the integrated approaches
of Gonczi et al[13] and other writers, along
with the “Key Competencies” approach to learning and assessment,[14]
would be contextually appropriate for future research and development
into AT teacher education.

I am hypothesising here that we will eventually generate an holistic,
competency-based model of AT teacher training in which a teaching certificate
would be granted after appropriate assessment, regardless of the length
of time spent formally at a training school. This of course would mean
more than 1600 hours attendance when necessary. Evidence of prior learning
would be an integral part of the system, so that, for example, a trainee’s
earlier private lessons, anatomy classes or school teaching experience
could be taken into account. There may even be a case to be made for
stages of qualification, beginning with a probationary accreditation,
followed by full registration after a period of continuing education,
supervision by a mentor and further assessment.

Of course, after so many years of using the more easily managed, quantifiable
fixed term system, our stakeholders in AT teacher education may find
that the changes in pedagogic and administrative habits required to
adapt to the qualitative approach to CBT will be considerable. In the
next instalment of this paper I will discuss the concomittant question
of assessment of competence, not only of beginning AT teachers but also
of their educators.

PART TWO (This part of the paper appeared in Direction: A Journal on
the Alexander Technique, 2002, Vol.3, No. 1, pp. 33-36)

In the previous issue of Direction I introduced the idea that future
Alexander Technique (AT) teacher education policies might benefit from
taking into account the contemporary educational theories of competency
based training (CBT). In the second installment of this paper I will
look at the parallel question of competency assessment, not only of
beginning AT teachers but also of their educators.

ASSESSMENT OF AT TEACHER COMPETENCIES
A major difficulty that would face the AT profession in any attempt
to implement competency based training and assessment lies in its lack
of “industry endorsed assessment guidelines”. This is compounded
by the lack of instructions on teacher training from Alexander himself
and the plethora of often conflicting opinions from his many successors
as to what good teaching means in practical terms. A far-reaching conceptualisation
of teaching competence would need to be agreed upon by the profession
both intra- and internationally before competency assessment guidelines
might even be brought up for discussion. By tradition, assessment of
AT teacher trainees’ progress is continuous over the residency
period and it is the prerogative of course directors to certify each
trainee as competent after at least three years attendance. This master
and apprentice type of assessment, where the teacher and assessor are
the same person, is based on a lengthy relationship and possibly biased.
Ultimately, each assessor/director has his or her reputation at stake,
as determined by the peer opinion, but this would probably be regarded
as insufficient quality assurance in the culture of CBT.

In 1992, STAT established an “independent panel of moderators”
to oversee and report back on training standards and trainee competence
at the schools within its jurisdiction. These moderators are senior
teachers and/or faculty members of training programs but, although their
recommendations are taken into account, they have no authority to pass
or fail the students or regulate the schools they assess. As I understand
it, their terms of reference for student appraisal are the following
five technical skills, mentioned in the first of this paper (refer Direction
Vol. 2, No. 10)

an understanding of Alexander’s terminology;
an ability to convey this understanding to the pupil, both manually
and verbally;
some knowledge of F.M. Alexander’s life and the history of the
Technique;
an ability to effect a change in the “use” of a pupil;
an ongoing expectation of change in [her/his] own “use.”[2]
While this list does not mention the integrated or higher level competencies
I also alluded to, as a monitoring template it is a healthy example
of external auditing of beginning teacher competencies and mitigates
the bias, confusion and possible upset that can occur with the apprenticeship
model. In line with this, the introduction of portfolios might well
be considered by those AT professional stakeholders interested in recording
competencies. Learners would be accountable for creating and maintaining
their portfolios in such a way that they could be presented to accrediting
authorities as well as being a form of continuously updated CV for viewing
by prospective clients and employers. This approach could have the additional
advantage of introducing them to the value of lifelong learning.

At this point I would like to highlight what is generally regarded
as an important higher-level competency for teachers and their educators,
namely reflectivity.[15]

REFLECTIVE THINKING
John Dewey published the second edition of his seminal book on reflective
thinking, How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective
thinking to the educative process in 1933,[16]
the year after his third and last introduction to Alexander’s
books appeared in The Use of the Self.[17] In
that introduction he describes his experience of reflective thinking
as Alexander’s pupil: In re-affirming my conviction as to the
scientific character of Mr Alexander’s discoveries and technique,
I do so then not as one who has experienced a “cure”, but
as one who has brought whatever intellectual capacity he has to the
study of a problem. In the study I found the things which I had “known”—in
the sense of theoretical belief—in philosophy and psychology,
changed into vital experiences which gave a new meaning to knowledge
of them.[18]

While the expression “reflection” is not often found in
the lexicon of AT teachers, it seems to me that if AT teacher trainees
are learning anything at all they should be learning to think reflectively.
Unlike other models of professionalism built solely around technical
expertise, Schön’s model of “reflection-in-action”[19]
has become recognised by educational researchers as central to professional
practice,[20] and deserves the study of AT teacher
educators.

Reflection-in-action refers to the process of responding to an unexpected
or inconsistent phenomenon by reflecting on and rethinking one’s
initial understanding of it, constructing a new description of it and
testing that intuitive theory in an action experiment. A reflective
practitioner becomes a researcher into his or her own practice, a self-educator
constantly learning, not just applying time-worn procedures to seemingly
repetitive problems. Schön points out that clients may also need to
be educated to this way of thinking, particularly if they are used to
unquestioning deference to their practitioners.[21]
This is the context for reflective contracts between practitioner
and client which call for: competences which may be strange to [the
practitioner]. Whereas he [sic] is ordinarily expected to play the role
of expert, he is now expected from time to time to reveal his uncertainties.
Whereas he is ordinarily expected to keep his expertise private and
mysterious, he is now expected to reflect publicly on his knowledge-in-practice,
and to make himself confrontable by his clients.[22]

For adult educators, Brookfield highlights the importance of another
dimension to reflection, “critical reflection”, which links
in with the learning of democratic habits by both teachers and students.[23]
More than coming to a clearer understanding of our actions and identities
by freeing ourselves of distorted ways of reasoning and acting, both
personally and professionally, to reflect critically is:

[T]o understand how considerations of power undergird, frame, and distort
educational processes and interactions [and] to question assumptions
and practices that seem to make our teaching lives easier but actually
work against our best long-term interests.”[24]
Processes of critical reflection characteristically utilise group discussion,
journals and logs. However, with regard to AT teacher education, as
distinct from post-graduate training, I wonder whether it may be more
appropriate not to emphasise this critical aspect of reflection until
trainees can sustain themselves well enough during any emotional reactions
that might be stirred up by either these processes or the intensity
of their AT work.

Hunt also points out some consequences for the faculty members who
are teaching “reflective practice”.[25]
As they practise it themselves they may also have to confront and articulate
issues about their own responsibility and accountability. And even though
they may be unqualified as counsellors, they may be called upon by their
reflective students to give therapeutic advice. Or the student might
challenge the structure of the learning environment and even leave it.
Moving between roles of confessor and assessor also puts added pressure
on a teacher’s relationships to learners. Based on their experience
with these problems, Hunt and her associates have developed an academic
practice model that aims to keep reflection within appropriate boundaries,
in their case the cognitive domain. AT teacher educators might take
heed of this advice and teach reflective practice only to the extent
that they can manage its consequences with integrity.

In the next section I will explore briefly some issues regarding the
competencies and accreditation of AT teacher educators, in particular
the training course directors.

COMPETENCIES OF AT TEACHER EDUCATORS
Despite the fact that waiver clauses of member societies often allow
them to change certain rules in unusual circumstances, the AS usually
specify that an applicant for Directorship of a training course needs
only to have a minimum number of years (seven to twelve, depending on
the Society) experience as a teacher plus a minimum time spent working
on training courses. No other academic qualifications—educational,
sociological or managerial—are deemed necessary. Many accomplished
AT teacher educators do not have any sort of externally recognised qualification,
let alone a teaching degree, and it is unlikely they would feel the
need for extra formal study. However, the Australian VET system specifies
that technically competent trainers employed by registered private providers
should have at least a Workplace Trainer Category 2 qualification for
‘off-the-job’ or sessional training. If Australian AT teacher
educators were to apply for government recognition of their courses
in the current culture of CBT, the AS minimum qualification standards
would be insufficient. In addition, research suggests that for institutional
based teaching a diploma or certificate in education is desirable, and
for higher level positions a degree that includes teaching and management
competencies.[26]

The US Society of Teachers of the AT (AmSAT) has by-laws that are more
demanding than the AS minimum and which specify that an applicant for
director status should have accumulated a minimum number of “credit
units” through post-graduate attendance at AT-based events such
as workshops, conferences and annual meetings.[27]
Beth Stein also describes in detail the attributes and skills, personal
qualities and other competencies the Training Course Approval Committee
would prefer training course directors (and presumably all other AT
teacher educators) to possess.[28] The following six “expressions
of ability” areas correspond to higher level competency units,
each of which has a set of elements too lengthy to list here:

knowledge base
experience
pedagogical skills
interpersonal/intrapersonal communication [skills]
ethical grounding
professional integrity
To accompany these competencies the AmSAT committee has also compiled
a list of sample questions that it may ask of potential training course
directors in person or by phone as part of its assessment process. This
is a commendable move towards demanding professional accountability.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS
Underpinning the re-educational philosophy of the AT is the principle
of stopping in order to check the appropriateness of habitual reactions
to stimuli and thereby allowing for more thoughtfully considered responses
to occur. In this sense, I believe that insufficient thought has been
given to AT teacher training systems and that, as a profession, we are
still relying on habitual pedagogies that have survived barely examined
for at least forty years. From an Australian perspective, there is considerable
research yet to be done to find a training and assessment model for
at teacher competence which would satisfy both the National Training
Framework and the particular needs of our work.

If we want our work to expand and be fully recognised as a teaching
profession by governments and communities worldwide we must nurture
within it a culture of inquiry and self-reflection. Indeed, compared
with the time and effort put into studying the physiological, and perhaps
psychological, attributes of the AT, scarcely any academically viable
research has ever been undertaken into at teacher education. Those who
are keen to enhance our professional standing need to sponsor debate
and research into the development of consistent and holistic professional
competency standards and assessment policies that accurately reflect
not only Alexander’s principles but also current educational theories,
particularly Competency-Based Training.